


Falling and Flying

by JoRaskoph



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Community: HPFT, F/F, Fate & Destiny, Friends to Lovers, Hearing Voices, Not Actually Unrequited Love, Quidditch, Soulmates
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-26
Updated: 2020-03-26
Packaged: 2021-03-01 02:00:28
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,477
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23327395
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JoRaskoph/pseuds/JoRaskoph
Summary: Love is never straightforward, they say. Not even when you are born with a soulmate you are predestined to be with; not even if you can hear that person's thoughts in your head.Things get even more complicated when you hear your soulmate fall in love with someone else.Alicia Spinnet has a lot to deal with, even before she develops a crush on Katie Bell, who most definitely isn't her soulmate.written for the Great Collab 2019 | homemade banner | dedicated to MadiMalfoy
Relationships: Katie Bell/Alicia Spinnet
Comments: 2
Kudos: 31





	Falling and Flying

The first time Alicia heard about soulmates, she was five years old. At the time the revelation was overshadowed by much more exciting events.

It was her fifth birthday, and the day her parents let her fly a broom for the first time. It was unusually early, but ever since Alicia had first seen her older cousin fly a broom and made the connection that flying was something children could do too—that she would do at some point—she hadn’t stopped talking about it. That had been when she was three, so really, Alicia’s parents had held out for a long time.

For her fifth birthday, they finally caved and gifted her a broom. Not a toy broom, either, a real quality broom, a Clean-sweep Seven. Secretly they assumed that their daughter would soon tire of her obsession when she had the real thing in her hands and it came attached with heights and weather.

All the cushioning charms and encouragement they had prepared for the day were unnecessary, however, because Alicia took to the sky like a fish to water.

Soaring as high as her parents would let her, with the wind whooshing around her, felt nothing short of magical. Her heart was beating hard and fast in her chest, her cheeks were burning hot in the cold wind. She could see her mother become smaller and smaller below her, but instead of feeling afraid, she felt ecstatic. Her father was on his broom, just a little behind and ready to catch her if she fell, but Alicia knew without a doubt that she wouldn’t fall. She couldn’t have felt safer, or happier than she did at that moment.

It was then she heard the voice. Even over the roaring wind, it was easy to hear, as it was clear in her head.

“All for me, all that cake. It’s for me alone!”, the voice said, and Alicia fell off her broom.

When she was back on the ground, safely in her mother’s arms, her mother tried to explain the concept of life long love to her.

“For some people, not everyone, only some select few, fate has given them one special person to be with for their whole life. To keep them company, you know?”, her mother had looked at her questioningly and Alicia had felt very important to be asked.

“Like Grandma keeps me company when you go out?”

“No, not like Grandma”, her mother had laughed. “More like Daddy keeps me company. He’s at home and has dinner ready when I have had a long day and he sometimes brings me chocolate when he knows I need it.”

The concept of someone bringing her chocolate was one Alicia could wholeheartedly approve, and from what she’d heard she thought her soulmate had the right attitude towards sweets. She nodded excitedly along with her mother’s words.

“And to help you find this person, fate has made it so sometimes, when you are very happy or very sad, you can hear some of their thoughts. This way you will know them a little already when you meet them one day.”

With the mysterious voice sufficiently explained, Alicia had demanded to be let back onto her broom and that had been that.

*

The afternoon light painted the hair streaming out under Katie Bell’s Quidditch helmet golden. Eleven years later, Alicia was on a broom again and the concept of soulmates was in her mind like it was so often these days. 

It was Gryffindor’s last match for the season, they were mere points away of winning and Alicia ought to have had other things on her mind. It wasn’t that she wasn’t giving her best right now as it was. Her knuckles were white from gripping the broom handle too tightly, her muscles were straining with the effort of flying that little bit faster, reaching that little bit further to catch the quaffle …

After a school year of training, the team was at peak performance. The three chasers were moving like one organism, they were so attuned to each other. Each expecting where the others would go before they did.

Even with their game going well, Alicia found she should have been thinking about something other than her favourite teammate. If they won, there would be a party in the common room, someone was bound to organise butter beers and after the week she had had. That was the kind of stuff she should be thinking about.

Alicia scrambled for things to think that weren’t about Katie and failed miserably when at that moment Katie scored an impossible goal and came flying over for a celebratory hug.

Hugging while seated on a broom required a lot of concentration so neither of the participants lost their balance. It was absolutely necessary for Alicia to take note of how far Katie was leaning into her, how closely she held her arm around Alicia’s shoulder, and to accommodate each movement with an appropriate reaction of her own.

Katie was holding on fast, so Alicia was hugging her back tightly. They were so close she could feel Katie's heart beating strong against her own chest.

The hug only lasted for a moment before Katie flew off to hug Angelina in turn, but it left Alicia with a flush.

All hope of thinking about anything but Katie was out the window after that hug. A mercifully brief time later, Madame Hooch’s whistle shrilled, signaling the end of the match.

Ginny had caught the snitch and everyone descended to pile on her in celebration. In the heap of players, Alicia ended up crushed between Ron and Katie, getting a mouthful of Katie’s hair. In that one moment, it didn’t even matter that Alicia’s first reaction was enchantment with Katie’s smell and her closeness. True, as a purely platonic friend she should have been annoyed, but she wasn’t—it was what it was.

At that moment, everything seemed possible. Students were chanting in the stands, red and golden flags were being waved… Alicia felt a rush of pride—they had done it, they had won the Quidditch Cup!

Her excitement was matched by her soulmate, who cried out triumphantly in her head: “Yes! They broke up. Rachel broke up with Ross!”

Alicia’s heart sank.

*

The older she had got, the more Alicia had looked forward to finding her soulmate. When she saw couples kiss, she got a warm feeling in her belly at the idea that sometime someone would want to kiss her like that.

Swinging her wand at Ollivander’s, Alicia experienced a wonderful tickling sensation and at the same time she heard her soulmate laugh, “Oh my god, Fred and Wilma are funny!” So, when she started Hogwarts, Alicia made an effort to talk to as many of the other students as she could. She even approached some older, scary looking Slytherins in hopes of finding someone who knew either Fred or Wilma.

She forged some inter-house friendships that way, but she didn’t find her soulmate.

Being at Hogwarts was wonderful, Alicia loved the common room and the easy camaraderie with her housemates. She found a best friend in Angelina Johnson, who was just as obsessed with flying as she was, but being a teenager meant she also had stronger emotions more often.

From one moment to the next, she could go from feeling like the world was ending to giggling over the lamest joke like it was the best thing she’d ever heard. It meant she heard much more from her soulmate now too. Over time, she figured out that the glimpses she got always matched the mood she was in when she heard them. Angelina and Alicia concluded the glimpses couldn’t be happening at the same time, there was no way soulmates were always feeling the exact same thing.

From what she overheard, her soulmate seemed to be very passionate about a great number of people. Alicia thought that was an excellent character trait.

It was only in her sixth year, that the thoughts she overheard started to worry Alicia. When, during the emotional mess that was pms, flying with her team again for the first time after the break made her tear up with happiness, Alicia heard the name for the first time in her soulmate’s thoughts: “Aaah, Rachel is so sweet and insanely pretty!”

Over the following months, Alicia had to listen to many more Rachel-related comments. Apparently, Rachel was funny, clever, smart and overall a charming human being.

Soulmates were not expected to save themselves for each other since nobody knew at which point in their lives they would meet. Alicia could hardly fault her soulmate for fancying that Rachel—least of all while she was developing her own casual but no less intense crush on Katie Bell—, but she still felt jealous.

*

The victory party in the Gryffindor room was soured by the voice in her head. No amount of jokes or butterbeer could smooth out the spikes of anxiety running through her, torn between what was going on inside her head and outside of it. It wasn’t right to be completely captivated by Katie’s laughter, only to be shot through with jealousy over a comment about how funny Rachel was.

The constant back and forth was exhausting.

When Katie’s hand brushed against hers while they were dancing, Alicia excused herself with a headache and fled to the dorm. Her feelings for Katie were becoming more intense every day, and if Katie felt the same about her, Alicia didn’t want to spend their first kiss hearing about Rachel.

She lay on her bed, staring at the velvety covers above, when the door opened and a familiar voice whispered: “Hey, are you alright?”

Alicia didn’t answer and after a few moments, she heard Katie close the door.

The next morning, she got up early and spent a few hours alone in the library, then sent an owl to St. Mungo’s. She got an appointment for the following Monday.

*

Healer Chamberlain gave her a sympathetic look over the rim of her glasses, as she listened to Alicia explaining her situation. “And you are quite certain you want to permanently mute the connection to your soulmate?”

Alicia gulped down a lump of emotion that was sitting thick in the back of her throat and nodded. She was going to miss the companionship she had felt when her soulmate’s thoughts aligned so effortlessly with her own. But this was for the best. Whoever her soulmate was, was obviously falling hard for Rachel and Alicia didn’t want to be dragged along.

“The procedure is very safe, it’s basically the same that happens to the few muggle-born children who have soulmates. We have their connections muted, so the muggles don’t think them insane for hearing voices …”

The healer went on to explain the details of the procedure, but Alicia concentrated on her own heartbeat. She was feeling a spike of panic at the thought of severing the connection she’d had all her life, and for a short hopeful second, she thought she would hear the voice one last time.

Her head stayed silent, though, she had only her own chaotic thoughts to keep her company.

“All done now, dear”, the healer said and held out her hand to help Alicia get up.

*

Alicia spent dinner watching Katie across the table. She admired Katie’s ability to carry on several conversations at the same time. She had her heart warmed by Katie’s ability to laugh uninhibitedly about a joke. She appreciated Katie’s soulful eyes and the curve of her mouth. Alicia even let herself imagine how it would feel to kiss that mouth and not once was she interrupted by a voice in her head.

At one point, Katie turned from where she’d been discussing the Wasps strategy with Ginny, looked Alicia straight in the eyes and raised one eyebrow. After that, Alicia had felt it was significantly harder to breathe.

They were left to stroll back to the common room together, as Angelina had gone to the library to finish her Potions essay.

The hallways in Hogwarts were not known for being toasty warm, but the goosebumps running up Alicia’s arms came from Katie walking so close to her. Sometimes their shoulders or elbows bumped together, but neither of them moved away. It was like racing the opposing team’s chaser to catch an important pass. Her heart was beating fast, she felt dizzy with her focus zoomed in on the few essential factors of the situation, as everything else became a blur of background noise.

With a pang, Alicia wondered, how often the two of them had been walking like this before, with her too distracted by the voice in her head to notice all the details that were now screaming at her that this thing crackling between them was nothing like platonic friendship.

In silent agreement, they took the south corridor instead of the moving staircases, which would have brought them to the common room faster.

The next time their hands brushed, Alicia held out her palm and felt with a rush of warmth Katie’s fingers close around hers.

*

A few weeks later, Katie invited Alicia to spend some days with her family over the summer. They spent them sunbathing and kissing at the lake behind the Bells’ house and the dusk disillusioned, chasing after each other on their brooms.

Katie was just like she’d always been, a charming ball of energy. She still got goosebumps when Katie let her fingers run up her arms, still caught herself looking at her and wondering what she should be thinking about. But being with her was a rush of joy Alicia had only known from flying.

On the third day of her stay, the sky was dark, clouds hanging low over the landscape and raindrops were pattering against the window.

“Shame”, Alicia sighed when they were sitting at the breakfast table and the rain had developed into a downpour, “I guess can read something …”, she suggested without much conviction.

To her surprise, Katie shook her head with a smile. She jumped up, pulling Alicia after her. “Oh no, I’ve been dying to introduce you to the most exciting muggle invention.”

Now in the living room, Katie gestured at a big black box. “May I present to you, the TV! Come, sit down. This is where I spent some of the most exciting moments of my childhood.”

They spent the day snuggled together on the sofa, watching the shows Katie had grown up with. At one point Katie turned her head and grinned at Alicia.

“When I was younger, I had a terrible crush on Rachel from Friends. Now that I think about it, she looks a bit like you.”

Alicia stared back speechless. She was unsure whether she was falling or flying—maybe both.

**Author's Note:**

> Many thanks to Lacey Black for reading this over and letting me complain about it while I was writing.
> 
> This plunny was inspired by MadiMalfoy’s Soulmate AU and Random Prompt Challenge, the deadline of which I didn't make, so I'm dedicating it to her.
> 
> Consider leaving a review if you made it this far—it would make my day!
> 
> The title is a play on the beautiful song title "Falling or Flying" by Grace Potter & The Nocturnals. All credit to them!


End file.
